President Bush's Speech: What About Terrorist Infiltration Through Our Borders?

By Michael Cutler

As you know, I generally focus on immigration-related articles because of my long years of experience in dealing with immigration. Today however, I will break with that tradition but simply discuss my reaction to the President's State of the Union Address that he delivered yesterday. I will also, in passing, note comments made by Timothy M. Kaine, the newly elected governor of Virginia as the member of the Democratic Party who was selected to provide a rebuttal to the Presidential speech.

The President spent a good deal of time talking about our nation's war on terror. Some of the analysts on the various networks said that Karl Rove and other advisors to the President felt that national security is where the President and the administration is strongest and he apparently wanted to use the area of strength for the focus of the State of the Union Address. The President paid homage to the soldiers fighting in Iraq and elsewhere to protect our nation. I believe that virtually all Americans are united in their support for our valiant men and women who serve our nation in the military, so this was an easy topic for the President to rely on for some positive reaction from the politicians assembled to hear his address. He spoke about the need to support law enforcement, another easy issue to support from virtually everyone listening. He spoke about the wiretaps and surveillances and tried to make his case for going forward with this controversial program. And then he got to the immigration issue and spent barely two sentences on this critical issue.

To my thinking, immigration, especially illegal immigration is worthy of greater consideration than the less than one minute the President expended on this issue. As I have stated on many occasions, illegal immigration significantly impacts more aspects of this nation than perhaps any other single issue. Consider the first two sentences of the preface of the 9/11 Commission staff report on terrorist travel: �It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal.�

It impacts the economy, healthcare, education, the environment, criminal justice and national security to name a few of the more serious areas of concern. Yet the best that President Bush could do was to repeat his usual message that we need to secure the borders and provide aliens with the opportunity to participate in a temporary Guest Worker Program that the President assured us would not constitute an "Amnesty." He claimed that our nation's economy depended on aliens in order to be successful.

The President did not talk about the latest tunnel found on the Mexican border that was highly sophisticated and took our nation more than one year to find even though according to newspaper reports, our government had information about it for nearly 2 years. He did not talk about the obvious fact that terrorists and weapons may well have moved through that tunnel or through any of the other 20 tunnels that have been discovered since the attacks of September 11, 2001. He did not talk about how he would have the millions of illegal aliens who undoubtedly would want to participate in the Guest Worker Program leave when their supposedly temporary period of employment expires. He also did not talk about how the Guest Worker Program he continues to push would not constitute an Amnesty, nor is he nor any other proponents for such a program willing to describe why they are eager to not use the "A" word (Amnesty) to describe a program that permits illegal aliens to remain in our country, work here and send money back to their homeland when we know that these aliens violated the laws to come here and remain in our country in violation of our laws. Finally, he did not explain how he would prevent terrorists from showing up at an immigration office, providing a false name to the overburdened bureaucrats and receiving brand new identity documents in false names that they can then use to travel freely throughout our country, travel freely across our nation's borders and even gain access to airliners and trains because these false names are not on any watch list or any "No Fly" list although their true names may well be on such lists. Pity the overburdened bureaucrats who are already dealing with a backlog of millions of applications for a variety of immigration benefits including the filing of applications to become resident aliens and even United States citizens. These are the same bureaucrats who will have to deal with these millions of new applications. The system lacks integrity now with fraud being a huge problem. I can speak from experience when I tell you that the Guest Worker Program would in essence legalize chaos! I worked for the fomer INS when the Amnesty of 1986 was enacted. The reason that the term Amnesty is avoided at all costs is because we all know that the last amnesty was an abysmal failure that only encouraged much more illegal immigration- in fact, the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our nation. Rather than simply bring the illegal aliens out of the infamous "shadows" it encouraged many more illegal aliens to run our nation's borders and take up residency in those very same shadows. There is no door we can shut to keep out the millions of new illegal aliens who, no doubt, would be emboldened to run our borders or enter the United States through ports of entry such as airports, land border ports or seaports intent in participating in the Guest Worker Program.

In listening to the President, it was clear that he wants to send the message that his administration will stop at nothing to protect our nation and our citizens from the next terrorist attack, apparently, unless securing our nation's borders are part of the game plan. It is clear that he and his administration will not secure the immigration system from fraud and therefore from potential terrorists. To talk about secure borders and a Guest Worker Program in the same breath makes no sense. A Guest Worker Program for illegal aliens will encourage more illegal immigration and will enable the terrorists who may well be hiding in plain sight at this very moment, to secure new identities and travel freely as they plan their next attack. Wire taps may be helpful in preventing the next attack however, secure borders and an immigration system with real integrity is critical to protecting our nation from the next attack. Do not take my word for it, consider the following quote from page 49 of the 9/11 Commission staff report on terrorist travel, �Thus abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity.� This page incidentally is contained in the chapter entitled, �Terrorist Travel and Embedding Tactics.�

It was my understanding that the purpose to creating the 9/11 Commission was to learn about the vulnerabilities and failings of our government and the various agencies who were involved to correct these defficiencies to secure our nation and our poeple against futrre attacks. Yet, since that dreadful day more than 4 years ago, our nation still has a Visa Waiver Program and our borders are no better secured today than they were before that attack.

The President is clearly trying to convince our citizens that his primary concern is to secure our nation and our citizens against future terrorist attacks. I could not agree more with that objective, I just want to make certain that he succeeds in protecting us. Blue smoke may work fine at a magic show but blue smoke makes a poor barrier against those who would destroy us. The security of a nation begins at its borders and must extend inward so that no alien terrorist or criminal alien, for that matter, can roam freely through our country and pose a threat to our safety and our survival.

As I recall, in his rebuttal, Mr. Kaine made the point that he believed that aliens who are legally in our country are important but that we need secure borders. I could not agree more with that assessment. I do not oppose legal immigration. As an officer of the former INS it was my obligation to not only arrest illegal aliens, but to advise aliens of whatever rights they may have had to remain in the United States and often found this to be a satisfying task. I do not consider aliens to be our enemies, for indeed, my mother who passed away while I was a college student, was an immigrant who was fortunate to be able to legally immigrate to the United States. As a result, unlike my mother's mother, for whom I am named, who perished in the Holocaust, my mother lived in the freedom that America offers and she went on to marry my dad and ultimately give birth to me. Legal immigration is one thing and illegal immigration, as the term clearly indicates, is a violation of law that our nation cannot tolerate especially as we fight the ongoing war on terror.

Simply stated, as long as the immigration system lacks integrity, as long as the illegal alien population in our country soars, and as long as our borders are not secured. our nation will not be secure either.

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